Photo: Montreal Alouettes
The Montreal Alouettes are hot on the heels of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats for first place in the East Division, but they know all too well just how quickly a team’s fortunes can change.
Now riding a three-game winning streak, the franchise isn’t far removed from a five-game losing skid that saw them plummet to the bottom of many power rankings. That has informed how they approach this stretch run.
“The month of August was not good to us. I think that’s woken everybody up in this organization to know that if we don’t play our best, you can lose,” head coach Jason Maas told the Montreal media this week. “But when we do play our best, and we do go out there and give’er, and we are healthy — the way we feel right now — you go out and feel like you have a chance to win every single week. I think that’s what you want this time of year.”
The Alouettes dropped five straight games from Week 9 through Week 14 while starting quarterback Davis Alexander languished on the injured list with a troublesome hamstring. At their worst, they were two games below .500, and the future appeared tenuous, though a playoff berth has since been secured.
Even so, the mid-season slide has ensured there is meaningful football being played down the stretch, something that wasn’t happening last year. Starting too hot comes with its own trials and tribulations, as Montreal learned after securing a playoff berth in Week 13 of the 2024 season and coasting through the final two months.
They won just twice in their last seven games, and after easily clinching first place early, blew their advantage with an East Final loss. That has driven home other lessons about how to handle these precious final weeks.
“I think we learned a little bit last year. Obviously, we wrapped it up in first place in early September, and had a long way to go before the playoffs began, plus a bye week at the end,” Maas recalled.
“I don’t feel like we didn’t practice hard or play hard throughout those games; games just didn’t go our way, and some of those were at the end of the games. Some things were happening, but I think everybody that’s here is well aware of what happened. This year, all that we’ve focused on is us, every single day, just doing our best and competing. It’s staying sharp that way. I think we’ve gone through that.”
This time there is meaningful football to be played, as Montreal entered this week trailing Hamilton by two games in the race for a first-round bye. A slip-up by the Ticats on Saturday has now increased their likelihood of closing the gap, but Maas is tempering his optimism with a healthy dose of introspection.
“To go through what we’ve gone through and still have an opportunity for that, I think is still a great thing. That’s our awareness factor. It’s not something we’re focusing on, but we know what’s at stake,” he insisted.
“I think our guys are excited about getting better every single day, because we’re not at the best we can be yet. There’s still some room to improve, and we’re going to improve every single day from here on out. Obviously, we’ve talked about being great. There have been eight great teams in this organization; we want to be the ninth, and in order to do that, you’d better stay focused task at hand.”
For now, that task is a Thanksgiving Monday clash with the Ottawa Redblacks — their first of two straight against the officially eliminated opponent. Whether you choose to refer to those matchups as easy wins or potential trap games is irrelevant to Maas, who is trying to be a mouthpiece for a culture of internal motivation.
“To be honest with you, I could care less if that makes them more or less (dangerous). I’m more focused on us and us doing our job every single day to the best of our ability,” he emphasized. “We want to go out there and compete at our best. I know we’re going to get an opponent that’s going to fight like hell — that’s what they’ve done all year.”
The Alouettes (8-7) and Redblacks (4-11) will kick off from Percival Molson Stadium at 1:00 p.m. EDT on Monday, October 13.
